


a small soft death

by patho (ghostsoldier)



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-30
Updated: 2012-10-30
Packaged: 2017-11-17 08:48:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/549745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostsoldier/pseuds/patho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“The finest steel,” the Outsider says, “is forged with true purpose in mind. Elements that enhance the strength of the weapon are carefully chosen, and those that make the metal brittle and weak are burned away. It is an exacting process. The most beautiful dagger will be of no use at all if the steel is not properly tempered. Do you understand?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	a small soft death

**Author's Note:**

> This started off as a story about the Outsider being a giant creeper, and somewhere along the line it turned into cosmic horror and High Chaos. Oops?
> 
> (why is Corvo so much fun to break why why why)
> 
> Warnings for: dubious consent and emotional manipulation. There are also some mild spoilers for the game.

They never use her bedroom, only his.

When Corvo commented on it once, Jessamine said, “Symbolism,” and rolled her eyes. She’s a practical woman--she has to be, what with the empire trying to pull itself apart at every turn--and has no patience for the importance attached to the various symbols of her office. Poetry, Corvo has discovered, also annoys her. He finds this charming.

He’d grinned. “Musn’t besmirch the sanctity of Her Ladyship’s bed?” 

Jessamine wrinkled her nose and poked him in the side. A smile broke through despite her best efforts. “Something like that,” she said. “Too many watchful eyes, and too many people waiting for me to make a mistake.”

They never discuss the possibility of breaking off their arrangement. Jessamine has made it very clear that she has no intention of ending things unless Corvo is the one who requests it, and Corvo…loves her. Loves every inch of her, her clever eyes and her clever mind, her elegant hands, the faint roundness of her belly that never quite flattened after Emily was born. For her, he would do anything. 

_(you cannot save her)_

The empire needs its Empress, now more than ever, but Corvo is only a man and his needs are simpler. He needs _her_. Jessamine. Her smile, the touch of her hand against his cheek. Her warmth in his bed and his name on her lips.

She has left him a note saying, “Meet me,” and he’d assumed she meant his quarters. After all, if she wanted him in an official capacity she would have said so. When his bedroom proved empty, he thought of their other meeting places, the ones hidden and tucked away all throughout the tower. He’s passing through the library on his way to another floor when a voice behind him says, “Corvo,” and when he turns around she’s there. 

He’s not sure how he missed her.

She’s dressed all in white, which strikes him as…wrong, somehow. It’s not a color she’s overly fond of. Ill-suited for a complexion like hers, she’d explained, and then her grin turned lascivious. “It’s also far too _virginal_ for my liking.” The crisp white silk she wears now emphasizes the paleness of her skin and the blackness of her hair. Red lips. Her eyes are in shadow.

“Corvo,” she says again. “I knew you would come.”

She moves closer and unpins her hair. It tumbles down around her shoulders, and Corvo’s mouth goes dry. Her hair is feather-soft and smells of the scented oil he once brought her from Serkonos, like lilies, and even though their surroundings make him uneasy he can’t help but bury his hands in the silkiness of it and tilt her head up for a kiss.

She tastes like dark wine, like drowning. Corvo groans. 

“We can’t,” he says. Kisses her again, presses her into a shadowed bookshelf well away from the glass doors. “Not here.”

Jessamine nips at his lower lip and slides her hands down his chest. “Of course we can,” she says. “It _is_ my library, after all.”

Corvo laughs, a little helplessly, and their kisses grow more hurried and frantic. They’re too much in the open, he _knows_ they are, but he’s already hard and she’s breathing fast against his mouth and it looks like they’re going to carry on regardless. He drags his mouth down her throat and bites gently, careful not to leave a mark, and Jessamine winds her fingers in his hair and _moans_. She’s so loud that nervous fear dampens the edge of Corvo’s arousal.

“Hush,” he says. “Hush, love, you have to be quiet.”

“Mm.” Jessamine rolls her hips and sighs. “I don’t want to be quiet. Let them hear. Let them _all_ hear.”

Corvo frowns, puzzled. This…isn’t right. This isn’t like her. That they’re in the library is unusual, but they’ve made love in stranger and far more public places. (Jessamine chafes, sometimes, at the restrictions her life has placed upon her). But this streak of exhibitionism is odd for her, and Corvo starts to pull back in concern. If something is wrong…

He doesn’t get the chance. Jessamine drags him down into another searing kiss, takes his hands off her hips and curves them over her breasts instead. She arches against him with a low, throaty sound and Corvo might be concerned but he’s also _human_ , and his body responds while the rest of his mind is trying to catch up. She doesn't smell like lilies anymore; she smells of _want_ , something deeper and saltier and wild. He wants--he _needs_ \--to be inside her. Warm and wet, tight around him, her cries muffled against his shoulder and her nails digging into his back. Corvo’s hands are shaking as he slides the silk from her skin and they’re still kissing, panting into each other’s mouths and the fabric in his hands is--

\--wet. Sodden. Desire is a rich, heady smell, but something sour now lingers at the back of his tongue. _Like biting on iron_ , he thinks nonsensically, and he has spilled enough blood to know what it smells like. He tears his mouth away and says, “no.”

 _(YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER)_

“No,” he says again, pleading now. “Please, no, no…”

Jessamine’s silks are no longer white, but rather the deep rich red of heartblood. Her shirt is open to the waist, but despite the blood in her clothes her skin is unmarked save for a knotted white scar running vertically between her breasts. Corvo’s hands are dripping, crimson to the wrists, and Jessamine--

Jessamine’s eyes are deep, oily black.

“My dear Corvo,” says the Outsider.

Corvo stumbles backwards, horrified. The Outsider is still wearing Jessamine’s face, but the eyes and voice are terribly familiar and jumbled memories pour unbidden into his mind. Jessamine, dying in his arms. Emily, kidnapped. A dank cell, six months of being starved and beaten and broken. 

A mask. 

A blade. 

A mark.

The library fractures around them, walls and bookshelves spinning off into the shimmering madness of the Void. Corvo frantically tries to wipe Jessamine’s blood off his hands, but does little more than smear it all over his clothes. It’s under his fingernails, in the lines of his palm and the cracks over his knuckles. He thinks it might never wash off, and he’s not sure whether this makes him want to laugh or cry.

Maybe both.

The Outsider watches from the bookshelf opposite. He hasn’t bothered to straighten his clothing, and the sight of Jessamine’s half-naked form, white against the red of the bloody silk, is doing strange things to Corvo’s head. He _knows_ it’s the Outsider, but it’s Jessamine too. Living, and whole. If Corvo just closed his eyes when he touched her, if the Outsider didn’t speak…

“Take it off,” Corvo rasps. His voice is trembling. “Right now. Take it _off_.”

The Outsider begins to strip, slowly and deliberately. They both know this is not what Corvo meant.

“You do take offense at the strangest things, dear one.” The Outsider peels off neatly-tailored trousers and drops them in a heap with the rest of the clothing. Jessamine’s body gleams pale as bone in the ghostlight of the Void, bare and beautiful and heartbreakingly familiar. “Do my gifts really make you so unhappy?”

“A gift,” Corvo says flatly. His heart is like a clenched fist, small and cold and tight, and he has to turn away and close his eyes. Doesn’t want to look anymore, to see this creature wearing the woman he loves. “You come to me--with _her_ face--and insult her by calling it a _gift_?”

The Outsider moves fast and silent as a fish cutting through water. Corvo has no warning before the Outsider is pressed against him, and when he flinches back there is nowhere to go. 

He was right, earlier, when he wondered if it would feel the same with his eyes closed. Jessamine’s skin is cool and smooth, and the hands that unfasten the ties of his clothing move with a deftness borne of years of experience. A tear slides out from beneath his clenched eyelids, and it’s Jessamine’s mouth that kisses it away. Corvo shudders.

“A gift,” the Outsider repeats. His lips brush the shell of Corvo’s ear. This close, the harmonics of his voice are hollow and musical and strange. “Because you’re lonely, Corvo. Because you fascinate me.”

“I don’t want this,” Corvo tries to say. The words catch in his throat, and all that comes out is a strangled, broken moan. Even though his mind is reeling with dizzy horror and grief, his body aches with how good it feels to be _touched_. Touched with intent, with a strange sort of desire. He has no idea if the Outsider feels _want_ the way mortal humans do, but his mark is burned onto the back of Corvo’s hand and it’s clear that in some form or another, he’s staked a claim. 

The Outsider’s gifts come with a price, but Corvo is sick and lost and sad, and doesn’t care anymore.

He doesn’t want this, but he doesn’t _not_ want it either. 

“Not as her,” he chokes out. “I don’t--please, not as her. I couldn’t-- “

 _I couldn't bear it_ , is what he cannot bring himself to say, but the Outsider seems to understand. 

“Such an endlessly surprising man,” he murmurs. The body against Corvo’s is sharper now, all sleekness and angles where there was once softness. “I thought she might make it easier for you, but instead you ask for this. How utterly--“

 _’Fascinating’_ , Corvo thinks. There is an edge of hysteria to the thought, which he finds unsettling. Is it possible to go insane in your dreams? _He’s going to say ‘fascinating,’ and if he does I might try to murder him._

“Ah, Corvo.” The Outsider tenderly kisses his cheek, fingers dancing over the front of Corvo’s half-open trousers. “My dear _naïve_ Corvo. You couldn’t ever hope to kill me, not even if you had a thousand lifetimes to accomplish the task.”

Corvo gasps as the Outsider slides his hand beneath rough fabric and leather. He’s still hard, shamefully so, and he can’t help but buck into the loose fist that wraps around him. Hates himself for it, especially when the Outsider makes a soft, pleased noise and tightens his grip. Corvo is glad, in a faint and detached way, that the hand on him is now very male. Nothing of Jessamine remains in the Outsider’s touch, and that makes it easier to bear.

“Your thoughts turn to murder so quickly now,” the Outsider says. He’s infuriatingly calm, almost conversational, like they’re talking in a pub somewhere and not the swirling insanity of the Void. As if his hand isn’t in Corvo’s pants and Corvo isn’t shaking with the effort to keep from rutting into the precise circle of his fingers. 

“Tell me,” he muses, “how much blood have you spilled in your sleep? You’ve shed enough of it during your waking hours that I can’t imagine your dreams compare, but the human mind is such a funny thing.”

“Please,” Corvo says, and falters when the Outsider leaves a trail of stinging little bites down the side of his neck. _Please stop talking_ , he wants to say. _Please go faster. Harder. Make it hurt._

 _Please,_ he wants to say, _make me forget._

He opens his eyes in time to see the man’s lips curve in a slow, dangerous smile. There is nothing but satisfaction in the Outsider’s voice. He repeats, “ _Such_ a funny thing.”

And then the Outsider is kissing him, wet and hungry, with teeth, and he strokes Corvo with ruthless, punishing efficiency. It shouldn't feel as good as it does. It should _hurt_ ; there is nothing gentle about it, nothing soft or loving or tender. It is everything Jessamine isn’t _(wasn’t)_ , and it is everything Corvo needs. The Outsider’s touch burns through him, cruel and merciless as a hurricane, and Corvo pants like a man drowning, gasping against the Outsider’s mouth.

“Wait,” he says. It’s too much, too fast, there’s white heat pooling in his stomach and clawing up his spine and it’s _too much please no_ , “stop, just-- _wait_ \--”

“No,” the Outsider says, and Corvo cries out as orgasm crashes over him like a wave. There is no joy in it, and little relief. He comes back to himself shivering and empty, hollow as blown glass. The briny, alkaline tang of sex hangs in the air, and the Outsider is studying him with a vague, distant curiosity.

“Tell me,” he says. “Now it’s all over and done, do you wish I’d kept her aspect?”

Corvo can remember the last time he and Jessamine made love. It was the night before he’d left on his mission, and it was more hurried than they usually liked. “You’re going to be late,” Jessamine said even as she wrapped her legs around his hips and hurried him on. “You’re going to be late, they’re going to come looking--“

And Corvo kissed her. Said, “They can look all they want, I’m not going anywhere,” and Jessamine had smiled brilliantly and pulled him down, laughed breathlessly against his mouth even as she arched beneath him, and he had--

He loved her. So very much.

“No,” Corvo says. His voice is thick. The words feel like broken glass in his mouth as he forces them out. “I can’t imagine anything worse than you wearing her face.” 

“Fascinating,” the Outsider breathes. His black, impossible eyes gleam, and shadows swirl around him. He cups Corvo’s face very gently between his palms and says, "What a marvelous and intriguing creature you are."

Corvo’s skin crawls. 

This time, the kiss is soft. Insistent. The Outsider tastes like salt, like blood, like deep inky waters and storm-tossed waves, and Corvo is shaking as the Outsider presses close, the breath shuddering out of him, and--

 _Now_ , it hurts. Tenderness so exquisite that it’s agonizing, and he doesn’t _want_ this. Not from _him_ , not from anyone. But the Outsider is drawing him down, hissing _yes, my dear, yes_ before capturing Corvo’s mouth again, and Corvo is helpless to stop the sorrow and despair from pouring out of him. Months and _months_ of rage and grief and pain, blood on his hands and the copper taste of adrenaline in his mouth, every terrible thought he’s ever had and every terrible deed he’s ever committed, and the Outsider greedily drinks it in and claws him open for more.

“Let it go,” he croons in Corvo’s ear. Someone is keening, raw and awful like a wounded animal, and Corvo doesn’t have anything left to give but the Outsider still takes and takes and _takes_. “You’re doing beautifully, my dear, you’re doing so well. Just let it. All. Go.”

And all around them the Void hums an insane litany like snatches of whalesong. Shadows move around him, _through_ him, cold and sinuous tendrils trawling in the dark places of his soul, and when they draw back Corvo arches with a broken wail. It’s like he’s shattering apart, _fear_ and _regret_ and other more secret things being torn out of him in ragged shreds, and the Outsider gulps down every last shimmering bit of it and softly kisses the tears from Corvo’s cheeks. 

“There we are,” he says. “I trust that feels better.”

“What--“ Corvo’s voice sounds rusty, like it’s coming from very far away. The world swims and yaws crazily before finally refocusing. He can’t stop shaking. “What did you do to me?”

“The finest steel,” the Outsider says, “is forged with true purpose in mind. Elements that enhance the strength of the weapon are carefully chosen, and those that make the metal brittle and weak are burned away. It is an exacting process. The most beautiful dagger will be of no use at all if the steel is not properly tempered. Do you understand?” 

Shapes coalesce around them. The eerie purple ghostlights of the Void are melting like candle wax into something soft and yellow. When Corvo blinks, the sleek wood of the Dunwall Tower bookshelves shift into the splintered walls of his room at the Hounds Pit. The Outsider is now little more than a shape, a hole in the world, deep and unreal and wrong.

“I’m just a man,” Corvo says blearily to empty air. “Not a weapon.”

His dream is already fading. He remembers pain, finely honed, and a cold precise fury. 

Perhaps, he thinks, he was dreaming of revenge. The thought strikes him as sharp and clean and _right_. 

_No, dear Corvo,_ whispers a voice in the back of his mind, _you will be the_ perfect _weapon_.

Corvo thinks about Jessamine, and Emily, this plague-ridden ruin of an empire crumbling all around them, and the way ahead burns bright and true.

A mask.

A blade.

A mark.

And Corvo says, “Yes.”


End file.
